Marrying Equals?: Changing Marriage Preferences of Highly Educated Women in India

In this paper, I test whether highly educated women in India are now choosing marriage partners who are “equals” in terms of educational and professional achievements rather than choosing partners primarily based on caste. The underlying research questions are - (i) Are the marriage preferences different across highly educated women from different time cohorts? (ii) Are the marriage preferences different across highly educated women from different economic classes? (iii) Are the marriage preferences different across highly educated women from the same cohort depending on whether they are formally employed or not? (iv) Is caste playing a less significant role in marital matching for the newer generation of educated Indian women? Or are their multiple gradients of preferences, that is, marry an “equal” but within the same caste? I use data from the India Human Development Survey, 2005. To operationalize equal educational and professional standing, I will match the education levels, occupation codes, and wage levels. Of course, a perfect match (doctors only marrying doctors) is not expected. However, broad occupational matching such as professionals or managers and similar wage levels is expected. I expect to observe a diminishing gap in husbands’ and wives’ education and employment outcomes across cohorts of highly educated women.